Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Man speaks

As a (woefully underpaid) Internet writer, I've been trying to understand the blogging-related changes the Federal Trade Commission announced last week regarding its "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials". Apparently, these new guidelines would define a positive review from our brave little site as an "endorsement", any books our reviewers decide to keep for our personal collections as "compensation", and require us to post some kind of disclosure identifying our relationship to the "advertisers"--in this case, the publishers, authors, or PR people who sent us the books.

I'd be more worried about this, but A) Wordcandy hardly ever writes anything uncritically positive, and B) wading through the legal language surrounding this decision is totally boring. Anyway, Wordcandy's official plan regarding this announcement is to burn that bridge when we cross it. Like Scarlett O'Hara, we'll worry about that tomorrow*.

But in the meanwhile, please accept our assurances that any review posted on Wordcandy is the result of our own reaction to the book in question, not some kind of paid advertisement. We have offended way too many authors (even some we really like!) to be accused of false enthusiasm.

*Note: Nobody sent us a copy of Gone With the Wind, and--just in case you're wondering--we don't even like that book.